Tracie Morris

Tracie Morris, one of the country’s most exciting and popular spoken word poets, has worked steadily over the last decade to redefine the limits of what poetry, and a poet, can be. While she is the author of two poetry collections—Intermission and Chap-T-her Won—and has been anthologized in a host of literary volumes, an important part of her process is to determine which “medium” best suits each poem. Some of her poems are to be experienced by being read on the page, others by being performed sonically, and some poems which do both. In the case of sound poems—poems whose meaning is based on the sounds of words, not just their literal meanings—Morris believes they are meant to engage the body by the auditory and physical presence created by the incremental manipulation of the words. She holds a BA and MFA from Hunter College and an MA from New YorkUniversity where she is now a PhD candidate.